2023-10-11 03:58:27
Despite the statute of limitations, the 87-year-old writer is still the subject of an investigation for rape of a minor under 15 years old.
A book that changed the law. The adaptation of Vanessa Springora’s story, The consent, which relates his relationship under influence at 14 years old with the writer Gabriel Matzneff, then fifty years old, hits the screens on Wednesday October 11. This work made it possible to strengthen the protection of minors once morest sexual violence, with the adoption of a law setting the threshold for consent at 15 years. From now on, below this age, a child is considered not consenting to a sexual act with an adult.
But where is the legal action triggered by the publication of this book, which highlights Gabriel Matzneff’s claimed taste for minors, young teenage girls and boys? Franceinfo recaps.
Hearings of “potential victims and witnesses”
The day following the publication of the book, in January 2020, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation into rape committed once morest a minor under 15 years old. An initiative taken despite the prescription, the facts having taken place in the 1980s. The objective was then to“identify any other possible victims who may have suffered offenses of the same nature on national territory or abroad”, specified Rémy Heitz, at the time Paris prosecutor. A call for witnesses was therefore launched.
More than three and a half years later, this investigation is still ongoing. According to our information, the file was transferred from the Office for the Suppression of Violence Against Persons to the new Minors Office, in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). As the Paris prosecutor’s office explains to franceinfo, the investigators were responsible for carrying out the hearings of “potential victims and witnesses”, as well as to exhume any act that might interrupt the prescription. The whole thing is currently being analyzed by the juvenile prosecutor’s office, “in order to investigate whether certain facts are likely to be prosecuted despite their age”said the public prosecutor.
Vanessa Springora was of course quickly auditioned. “ The facts being prescribed for her, this hearing will only have symbolic significance for Vanessa Springora., communicated his lawyer, Léa Forestier. But “the opening of an investigation is a strong message for potential other victims for whom action would not be prescribed”considered the author.
Three months following the publication of Consentanother woman, Francesca Gee, came out of silence in a interview au New York Times. For her too, the facts are prescribed. This former journalist was 15 when she met the author, then 37, in the 1970s. In a self-published book, The Deadliest Weaponshe recounts in particular how the writer used, once morest his will, his image and his letters in his writings, including in his essay defending pedophilia, Those under sixteen.
Gabriel Matzneff heard by the police in open hearing
Several other women testified to similar facts also prescribed, a source close to the case told franceinfo at the end of August 2022. After the examination of the writings of Gabriel Matzneff and numerous hearings – including that of the former Minister of Health Michèle Barzach, accused by Francesca Gee of having turned a blind eye to the actions of the writer when she was a gynecologist – , the author was confronted, in open hearing, with all the elements gathered as part of the investigation, in August 2022.
Since the start of the affair, the winner of the Renaudot prize, now 87 years old, has contested Vanessa Springora’s story and believes he does not deserve “the awful portrait” that the editor and author draws from him. Gabriel Matzneff, however, affirmed “to regret” his past child criminal practices in Asia. “A tourist, a foreigner, should not behave like that. (…) Naturally, I regret”he declared, arguing that “at the time”, “no one ever talked regarding crime”. He has since self-published Vanessavirusa book written in response to Consent.
The procedure for “apology” of child crime canceled
In parallel with the investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office, Gabriel Matzneff was summoned to appear for “apology of child crime” by the prevention association L’Ange Bleu. But the citation was declared void, at first instance and on appeal, for procedural reasons. A decision “without surprise”according to the writer’s lawyer. “We do law, not literature or morality, especially since the prosecutions were already artificial”welcomed Emmanuel Pierrat.
His client, who permanently lost the allowance from the National Book Center for low-income writers that he had received since 2002, was seen this summer at a reception organized in the Gallimard gardens, revealed Mediapart. The publishing house, which has stopped marketing its books, acknowledged to the investigative media its arrival that day, while denying having invited it. “At Gallimard, I am at home”for his part supported the writer. “Matzneff still has many accomplices, there is a lot of hypocrisy, but I fear nothing,” underlines to AFP Vanessa Filho, the director of Consent. In the absence of any possible legal action given to this affair, she wishes her film “can do preventative work”.
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